During the past 10 years, Paul McCaughey and Mario Therrien have devoted part of their research to developing an enhanced green needlegrass variety.
It was painstaking work at times, but it resulted in AC Mallard, a new line of green needlegrass with low seed dormancy and superior seedling vigor.
“It’s a grass that greens up very early in the spring and it seems to stay green till fairly late in fall,” McCaughey said.
Those characteristics have the Agriculture Can-ada Brandon Research Centre scientists keen about the plant’s potential as a native grass that could be incorporated into prairie pastures.
Read Also
Agriculture ministers agree to AgriStability changes
federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
Part of the potential lies in stockpiled grazing, a method producers use to extend the grazing season.
AC Mallard will be available to producers for planting in 2002.
McCaughey and Therrien are confident about AC Mallard’s merit for prairie restoration and enhancement.
“It seems to be pretty tough stuff that can establish itself more readily than some other native varieties,” McCaughey said.
An advantage of native grasses is that they can endure for centuries with little maintenance.
They seldom need to be replanted, as long as they are properly managed.
“Mother Nature has done a very good job,” Therrien said.
McCaughey and Therrien developed AC Mallard by selecting green needlegrass plants that established quickly each year.
Through their selections, they improved the germination rate so 32 percent of seeds would germinate the same year they were planted.
That was a huge step up from the 1.8 percent germination rate they found before starting seed selection.
“We kept the best and discarded the rest,” said McCaughey, who specializes in beef pasture management.
Improved germination rates make it possible to plant green needlegrass using conventional seeding methods.
The high germination compares favorably with Lodorm, a green needlegrass variety developed in the United States that is already commercially available.
The researchers found that AC Mallard’s seed production is higher than Lodorm. AC Mallard also reseeds itself well through seed shattering, McCaughey said.
The variety originates from wild green needlegrass plants found in southwestern Manitoba. That makes it well adapted for the Canadian Prairies.
Ducks Unlimited has been granted an exclusive licence to commercialize the new needlegrass under the Ecovar brand and to market it in Canada.
Because AC Mallard is native to the Prairies, Ducks Unlimited sees it as a plant with considerable potential for the northern Great Plains.
“We are confident that is going to have good legs right across the Canadian Prairies and into the U.S.,” said Brent Wark, a habitat biologist with Ducks Unlimited Canada.
A goal of Ducks Unlimited is to create productive wildlife habitat that is long lived and easily maintained.
AC Mallard offers an immediate fit for land restoration and reclamation projects.
Wark said Ducks Unlimited will evaluate AC Mallard’s forage value this year. It wants to have information from those evaluations available in a couple of years.
